Edmund Winston

Fitting In: A Personal View from High School Life



Posted: Friday, August 10, 2007

by
E-IV Guitars

I wrote this while I was still in high school, and its my first article on here. So understand it’s an uneducated view from a 16-17 year old before you ridicule me for posting it.  It starts going a bit off target, but I think it still gets the point across.

    It takes a smart person to play dumb because; well, let’s face it, a dumb person wouldn’t being playing.  People play dumb all the time, but why?  It can be fun.  I do play dumb all the time, but I’m just joking around with friends.  But, do some people play dumb to fit in?  I’m sure they do.  The fact they are trying to fit in, at all, decreases their intelligence.  Smarter people (or “Nerds") do not try to fit in because they realize you don’t have to be accepted by your peers to survive.  

    But then again, even that may not necessarily be true. Smarter people might realize they are trying to fit in, but they do it anyway.  Possibly because they are deprived of attention somewhere else in life.  If you are neglected at home, you may feel the need to be popular.  But its not really the need to be popular, it’s the need for friends.  Everyone needs friends to be there for them, its important for the quality you live your life.  Unfortunately, that gets confused with popularity.

    It is the people that crave attention and pretend to be something they’re not that aren’t very smart.  No one will survive in the real world unless they can accept themselves for who they are.  This behavior may be excusable while growing up and going to school, but what other students think of you really shouldn’t matter.  School is just a “pre-life" designed to prepare you for real life. You don’t really need to be worried about anything, other than grades, until after you graduate.  

    Why do people care what other people think?  It shouldn’t matter, so why does it?  I personally believe the answer to that question is:

            WE ARE ALL APPLAUSE JUNKIES.

We like attention, when its good.  When we do something right, we like when people notice and give us credit.  And we don’t want people to know when we did something wrong;  if they were to find out, we would get embarrassed.   So when trying to fit in, we do things that other people like. And we avoid things that we believe other people would disapprove of, or ridicule us for.

    Unfortunately, this won’t stop.  It is, after all, a part of life and growing up.  But the sooner we realize we don’t need to be accepted for how we act, or what we wear, the better off we’ll all be.

Edmund Winston is the founder and CEO of E-IV Guitars. He and his partner have years of combined experience playing, repairing, and building guitars, basses, and accessories. He is also an avid baseball fan and sports memorabilia collector.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Amunet
from West Virginia 4 years 125 days ago.
I am a teen writer, I found your article to be very true still to this day. People havent changed, at all.
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